146 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



when I considered tliey ought soon to be spawning. Each 

 pair was placed separately — one pair being a couple I 

 had found together, the other a male and female taken 

 from separate stones at some little distance apart. Next 

 morning, the 14th June, the females had deposited their ova, 

 in both cases on pieces of slate I had placed for the purpose. 

 In both cases, also, the eggs were fecundated, with very few 

 exceptions, showing that, however they may pair and remain 

 faithful, a ripe male will fecundate the ova of a casual 

 companion. 



The ova when deposited were pale pink granules of com- 

 paratively large size, laid on the slate with less regularity than 

 in the case of L. himaculatiis, and the parents seemed to lie 

 on the top of them with most watchful anxiety. In order to 

 keep them free from dust and sediment — the great enemies 

 of ova when thus kept under unnatural conditions, and 

 merely supplied daily with fresh water — the slates were 

 turned upside down, under which circumstances the parents 

 were for some days almost invariably found upside down 

 upon the ova, attached to the slate by their suckers. 



Finding it difficult to supply such small fishes with satis- 

 factory food, I kept the dishes supplied with bunches of the 

 finer-tufted seaweeds, amid the numerous branchlets of which 

 minute Crustacea and mollusca, both mature and embryonic, 

 are to be found. This seaweed they ate, throwing up the 

 indigestible portions, such as the shells of the mollusca, the 

 plates of annelids, etc., along with the more fibrous portions 

 of the seaweeds, in a globular egg-like "casting," with a 

 tough coating. Similar " castings " I have found thrown up 

 by others under natural conditions, so that this rough-and- 

 ready mode of supplying their necessities seems to be common 

 to the species, whose spoonbills of mouths readily lend them- 

 selves to this mode of sucking in food. No doubt, also, this 

 mucilaginous seaware will help to provide the plentiful 

 mucus with which this fish is supplied. 



All the species of Liparis and Lepadogaster readily accom- 

 modate themselves to the narrow bounds of the dishes in 

 which I have kept them for purposes of examination ; but 

 Ziparis Montagici displays far greater restlessness and activity 



